and that's what the republicans said about the economy. and they want to do it again with this cliff. and they want to do it again with the debt court of appealing in january. and we can't keep surrendering to that. >> i want to talk than. thank you for the analogy, by the way. you have called on congress to remove the debt ceiling altogether, to do away with it entirely. >> yes. the debt court of appealing is entirely superfluous. what the debt ceiling says if you can't pay the bills. you certainly should have an intelligent debate over how much money you want to spend, what the tax level should be. and that either produce a balanced budget or a deficit, whatever. but the decisions that were made two and three years ago produced the necessity to raise the debt ceiling again. to say you're not going to raise the debt ceiling is to say you're going to default and that's going to collapse the economy. you can't do that. now, we have raised the debt ceiling 77 times since world war ii, seven times under the last bush administration. the norma